PHILADELPHIA — There are times, Brett Brown confided, when gatherings of the 76ers’ coaches won’t always revolve around basketball speak.

“‘Tell me exactly where it hit in Mexico when the dinosaurs were wiped out,’” Brown said Monday, recalling an encounter with one of his assistants.

Subjects like that will occasionally find their way to the table. Then, when Brown has grown tired of quizzing one of his youngest assistants, on any topic under the sun, the Sixers’ coach will ask Lance Pearson something more relevant in regard to the NBA.

No matter his experience level, his title or his job description, Pearson is a part of Brown’s staff, a visible figure at both practices and games. Pearson joined the Sixers around the start of the regular season — rising from the NAIA ranks of college basketball to the game’s most elite level.

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Pearson is Brown’s on-hand analytics expert. He’s the man to whom Brown will turn with questions like who should shoot the ball and from where should he shoot it, or any other algorithm one could imagine involving the players on the roster of the Sixers (17-60), who next play Wednesday at Toronto.

“I have a guy in my meetings who I’ve just fallen in love with,” Brown said at Monday’s practice, speaking glowingly about Pearson. “I’ve got a lot of assistants, and I’ve got a gentleman with about four degrees that is incredibly impressive when you say, ‘What is your background?’ and he rolls up all of this about a doctorate.

“And all’s he does in my meetings is (respond) when I say, ‘Is that true? Who’s the best in the league at this? What does this mean? We’re No. 1 in the league in pace. Is that (because of) a kick-ahead 3-ball? I don’t think so. You’ve got the wrong guy shooting.’ And (he’s got) this efficient shot chart. ‘Why is that so good? Why? Because you shoot 3s with guys who can’t. I don’t see that.’ So I’m always inquisitive and challenging and always taking everything that you think and know and digested and beat it up, so we can get more polished and I can get better. And the analytics side of it has really captured my imagination, and will factor into a lot with this upcoming draft. I’m going to see a different side than I probably even know when we start assessing and how we start assessing people.”

How Pearson and Sixers general manager Sam Hinkie crossed paths is vague (“I showed some of the stuff I did to Sam Hinkie, and he hired me on,” Pearson said), but the terms in which Pearson conducts his day-to-day duties within the Sixers’ basketball operations ranks are clear-cut.

Pearson isn’t your standard NBA assistant.

He has undergraduate degrees in mathematics, computer science and philosophy from the University of Kentucky, as well as a Ph.D in cognitive and neural systems from Boston University. He’s developed software, called the Pearson Performance Tracker System, intended for advanced basketball scouting. Pearson first used the program at Lindsey Wilson College in Columbia, Ky., his professional stepping stone connecting a 12-year stint as an AAU coach to his first season with the Sixers.

“I could do a complete scouting report by watching video, and (Pearson) would input the other team’s stats into his program and come up with an as-detailed scouting report as me,” said Lindsey Wilson men’s basketball assistant coach Chris Starks, who worked with Pearson for two seasons at the NAIA program. “He’s one of the smartest individuals I’ve ever been around.”

Starks said Pearson’s two-season basketball tenure at Lindsey Wilson, where he first served as a psychology professor, had a correlation to the Blue Raiders’ consecutive appearances in the NAIA championship game, during the 2011-12 and 2012-13 seasons.

Pearson, as Starks recalled, would have a laptop with him at games. And in timeouts, “he could press a button and give us our best five (players) at any given time and in any game situation, or who we needed to foul and at what time we should start fouling. It was instrumental in many of our comebacks,” Starks said, when reached by phone Monday.

The NBA and other professional sports leagues are embracing analytics and the use of advanced statistics as a means of getting a leg-up on coaches and general managers who use more conventional approaches. Brown, who was introduced to the NBA by the old-school system employed by San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich, appreciates both mentalities.

“There’s a bit of defiance in me that doesn’t believe it,” Brown said. “Prove it, and if you can get through those types of layers, I say, ‘Wow.’”

Forward Thaddeus Young isn’t as convinced.

“A lot of teams, a lot of GMs have shifted toward analytics. It makes sense. Some of the stuff I don’t agree with, but it is what it is,” Young said. “They give the information to us and feed the information to us to make sense. I believe it helps. In some ways, it doesn’t help and it doesn’t work.

“I try not to look at it too much. I just try to play basketball. They’ll tell me the numbers and I’ll be like, ‘OK, that makes sense,’ but at the end of the day, they’re just numbers.”

No matter the opinion of players or coaches, analytics are acting as a compass that’s guiding the Sixers in their future personnel decisions. And it’s not as though Pearson is completely new to the sport.

“I grew up in Kentucky. It’s impossible not to love basketball if you grow up in Kentucky,” Pearson said.

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The Sixers signed swingman Adonis Thomas to a 10-day contract that will run through the conclusion of the regular season. The team had an open roster spot, choosing against re-signing guard James Nunnally after his second 10-day deal had expired.